Announcements From Qlik Connect | Gestalt IT Rundown: June 5, 2024

This episode of the Gestalt IT Rundown includes a closer look at the announcements from Qlik Connect, offering a snapshot of Qlik’s evolving position in the data analytics and BI space. The summary highlights how Qlik’s new initiatives and product updates are set to empower organizations with enhanced data integration, active intelligence, and insights. This discussion features Stephen Foskett and Gina Rosenthal and was recorded on-site at the event.


Key Acquisitions Drive Qlik Community Growth

Gina Rosenthal discusses how strategic acquisitions have been pivotal in expanding the Qlik community and enhancing its comprehensive data analytics platform as seen at Qlik Connect 2024. The article discusses how Qlik’s deliberate integration of acquired technologies has bolstered its offerings, catering to a growing user base looking for advanced data integration and actionable insights. These moves not only show Qlik’s commitment to continuous improvement but also position the company to meet the evolving needs of the data-driven landscape.


Qlik Connect 2024: A Chocolate Alligator and a Bunch of AI Announcements

Gina Rosenthal provides an intriguing account of Qlik Connect 2024, focusing on the range of AI announcements that promise to enhance the analytics platform. The article highlights how Qlik is embedding AI capabilities into its products to enable deeper insights and more intuitive data interaction for its users. Rosenthal’s lively coverage also captures the event’s unique ambiance, complete with an unexpected chocolate alligator, underscoring the creative and innovative spirit that drives Qlik’s community gatherings.


Data Quality is More Important Than Ever in an AI World with Qlik

In our AI-dominated world, data quality is the key to building useful tools. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast features Drew Clarke from Qlik discussing best practiced for integrating data sources with AI models with Joey D’Antoni, Gina Rosenthal, and Stephen Foskett before Qlik Connect in Orlando.


AI Is Pushing Storage and Data Management Harder Than Ever

Former Tech Field Day delegate Chin-Fah Heoh delves into the implications of AI on storage and data management, drawing from Gina Rosenthal’s recent article about Solidigm at AI Field Day. Chin-Fah discusses the escalating demands placed on storage systems by AI workloads, emphasizing the critical need for high-performance solutions. The stages of AI data processing (ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inferencing) require high read IOPS, ultra-high write throughput, and low latency. Chin-Fah also explores the role of data governance in ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of data for AI applications. Read more on his blog!


Next-Generation AI With VAST Data: Beyond Storage and Compute

This LinkedIn article by Gina Rosenthal discusses the VAST Data solution for AI data presented at AI Field Day. VAST Data pioneers AI and deep learning infrastructure with its integrated VAST Data Platform, as presented in partnership with NVIDIA and Supermicro that further solidify VAST’s role in streamlining AI adoption and digital transformation.


Qlik Presents About AI on AIFD4

At AI Field Day, Qlik unveiled their comprehensive AI strategy, focusing on enabling customers to tackle the complexity and scale of AI integration into their operations with solutions like predictive analytics, AutoML, and their 170K-strong model portfolio. With initiatives like Qlik Staige, the company facilitates the use of AI for those new to the field, using established algorithms and bringing structured and unstructured data together for added value. Read more about the Qlik presentation in this LinkedIn Pulse article by Gina Rosenthal!


VAST Data Operationalizing AI

At AI Field Day 4, Keith Townsend engaged with VAST Data’s John Mao and Neeloy Bhattacharyya to discuss the company’s innovative architecture that separates the persistent data layer from stateless logic, optimizing access patterns and improving data preparation efficiency for AI applications. Gina Rosenthal highlights their global namespace approach and the unique “VAST DataBase” system, they are streamlining data availability and scalability across the pipeline.


Google Cloud at Intel Day @ #AIFD4

At AI Field Day, Google Cloud’s Brandon Royal presented insights into AI platforms and infrastructure, emphasizing the shift from the internet to mobile and AI. He introduced Gemini, Google’s multi-modal model, and unveiled Gemma, a family of lightweight models. Royal discussed safety measures and highlighted GKE’s role in AI, covering CPUs, GPUs, and TPUs. A demo showcased Gemma on GKE supporting 8K tokens. Ameer Abbas, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud, focused on Developer and Operational Productivity with Duet AI, demonstrating code development and transformation capabilities for enterprise builders and developers. Read more in this LinkedIn Pulse article by Gina Rosenthal.


VMware by Broadcom Presents Private AI With Intel at AI Field Day 4

During AI Field Day 4, VMware stepped up to showcase how Intel AMX CPUs can be leveraged for Large Language Models (LLM) on vSphere, presenting a CPU-centric approach to AI tasks commonly handled by GPUs. As discussed by Gina Rosenthal, Earl Ruby of Broadcom (VCF) demonstrated the potential of Intel’s AMX technology in both older Ice Lake and newer Sapphire Rapids systems, achieving model fine-tuning and inference without the use of GPUs. This approach champions using CPUs for AI when feasible, reserving GPU use for scenarios demanding lower latency, and highlights the compatibility requirements for effectively implementing AI with Intel’s hardware in a vSphere environment.


AI in the Marketing Arena With Digital Sunshine’s Gina Rosenthal

In the latest episode of TechArena, host Allyson Klein engages with Digital Sunshine’s Gina Rosenthal in a thought-provoking discussion on the transformative impact of AI on the marketing landscape, setting the stage for AI Field Day 4. The conversation delves into current trends and future implications of AI in marketing strategies, offering insights on how businesses are adopting these technologies. As AI Field Day 4 approaches, this dialogue serves as a tantalizing glimpse into the potential and challenges AI presents to both marketers and technologists.


AI Field Day 4 Kicks Off With VMware’s Private AI

Gina Rosenthal is delivering real-time insights on each AI Field Day presentation, starting with her take on VMware’s advancements in AI. In their presentation, VMware highlighted the ease of deploying AI applications on existing infrastructure with a focus on robust security and privacy, leveraging their Private AI and partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA. VMware’s session delved into how their solutions, geared towards the generative AI market, are enabling customers to significantly improve operational tasks such as documentation search, boasting a 500% effectiveness increase.


Intel Day Kicks Off at AI Field Day 4

As AI Field Day 4 continues into day two, Gina Rosenthal turns her attention to the capabilities of Intel Xeon CPUs in AI, particularly in inference workflows, as presented by Ro Shah, AI Product Director at Intel. Shah delineated the growing trend towards generative AI with large models, while recognizing that enterprises are more inclined to adopt smaller language models, positioning Xeon as a suitable solution for these scenarios. Intel’s commitment to serving the AI market extends beyond hardware, showcasing their strategy of enabling AI across the board through developer support, tool extensions, and a strong partnership ecosystem.


Why Storage Matters for AI – Solidigm

During AI Field Day 4, Solidigm, alongside partner Supermicro, spotlighted the pivotal role of storage in AI, as discussed by Gina Rosenthal. Ace Stryker of Solidigm emphasized the need to shift from HDDs to solid-state drives, aligning with the trends of chip spending growth and the demand for higher storage in AI servers. Supermicro’s Wendell Wenjen and Paul McLeod further discussed the integration with WEKA and the importance of storage in AIOps, indicating that a substantial portion of Supermicro’s revenue is derived from AI-related ventures.


Generative AI – Risks and Rewards With Gina Rosenthal

In this article, Sulagna Saha outlines Gina Rosenthal’s thoughts on the societal and environmental impacts of generative AI. The hype around generative AI has made it apparent that the technology holds great promises, but not enough people know about its downsides. Read the article at Gestalt IT or watch the Ignite Talk from the recent Edge Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.


Design Edge Infrastructure With NodeWeaver

In this LinkedIn post, Gina Rosenthal gives an overview of NodeWeaver’s presentations and demos at Edge Field Day 2. NodeWeaver introduced their platform, designed to behave like a public cloud, hiding hardware intricacies and making it easier for users to manage edge infrastructure. The article further delves into how NodeWeaver automates tedious specifics of deploying, managing, and operating edge compute infrastructure and concludes with how it simplifies day-to-day operational tasks as well.


Navigating Data Security at the Edge

Security is one of the most debated areas in edge computing. In this delegate roundtable recorded at the recent Edge Field Day event, the panel uncovers the risks and security limitations of edge sites. Watch the roundtable or read the article at Gestalt IT that talks about navigating these risks.


Edge Computing Architecture Fundamentals

At Edge Field Day 1, companies such as Scale Computing, Mako Networks, Avassa, Zededa, and Opengear presented their solutions for deploying applications to the edge. There has been no universal agreement on what the term “edge” means, but delegates concluded that organizations should consider deploying applications in a location where they can achieve peak optimization. The presenters focused on networking, out-of-band access, compute/storage, provisioning, observability, and orchestration, aspects, but stressed that there is no uniform approach given that the edge varies by context. Read on for Gina Rosenthal’s thoughts on EFD1 and edge computing!


Cloud Field Day 16 #Shorts

Gina Rosenthal recorded a YouTube Short focused on the cloud market in general in preparation for Cloud Field Day 16. This is an innovative new short-form video format, and we’re happy to be featured by Gina!


Measuring the Current Day Blast Radius of Outages

Writing for Gestalt IT, Sulagna Saha discusses the most recent delegate roundtable discussion from Storage Field Day. Delegates, Enrico Signoretti, Frederic Van Haren, Glenn Dekhayser, Gina Rosenthal, Richard Kenyan, and moderator, Stephen Foskett, stood out in the discussion of Managing the Blast Radius as System Components get Bigger! Check out Sulagna’s thoughts on the dissection of this premise and the brainstorming that occurred on ways to limit the scope of impact.